Significant Events: Luvvies Vs Lavvies
This article, published in the SJT Circular in 2022, looks at the infamous financial crisis of 1997 dubbed by the media 'Luvvies Vs Lavvies'.Luvvies Vs Lavvies
by Simon MurgatroydFor those of you with a good memory, cast your minds back 25 years. Do you remember ‘luvvies vs lavvies’?
For in early 1997, the SJT was making national headlines for all the wrong reasons. Today, we would no doubt dub this part of the ‘culture wars’ but back then, this was a genuine surprise and an unforeseen shock to the theatre.
To set the scene, the SJT had opened in a barrage of publicity in spring 1996. Over the previous five years, £5.2m had been spent converting the town’s former Odeon cinema into the state-of-the-art theatre complex with which we are all familiar with and support today.
However, there were funding difficulties from the get-go. This was largely due to a now acknowledged ill-conceived arts policy. With the introduction of the National Lottery, large sums of money were suddenly available for arts and heritage projects and there was an emphasis on capital projects - i.e. buildings such as the SJT.
Unfortunately, this was not accompanied by increases in funding to help run these venues. In the case of the SJT, the company moved into a building more than twice the size of its previous home, practically doubled its workforce overnight and yet was receiving essentially the same public subsidy as it had in the old venue.
No allowance was made by funding bodies - either for the SJT or many other similar projects - for the vast increase in expenditure needed to successfully run new larger buildings. Something had to give.
At the end of its first year (1996) at the new venue, Artistic Director Alan Ayckbourn predicted the company would run a loss of £200,000 during the coming year (1997) and, subsequently, asked Scarborough Council to contribute an extra £50,000 subsidy in addition the £141,000 it already gave - and which had not been increased following the move from the smaller venue, the Stephen Joseph Theatre In The Round. The £50,000 request was also part of a tripartite agreement with the National Lottery and North Yorkshire County Council which would cover the shortfall providing each of the three bodies contributed. If one dropped out, devastatingly, the entire funding was lost.
At the same time, Scarborough Council was discussing means of trying to save £566,000 in its annual budget and was considering cutting 22 public toilets which, coincidentally, amounted to approximately £50,000. The theatre’s request for funding and the decision regarding the toilets were entirely separate issues funded by separate budgets as several of the more level-headed Scarborough councillors pointed out.
Sadly, louder voices failed to make that distinction including several councillors and, fanned by the often less than supportive local media at the time, the suggestion Scarborough Council had the choice between funding the SJT or having public toilets in the town was the story which instead emerged.
The dissenters found a public figurehead in Councillor Jane Kenyon, who became the public face of opposition to the theatre, featuring in newspapers and on television arguing
against further subsidy for the theatre and issuing quotes such as the theatre was like a "train without brakes" and "It's time the theatre learned to stand on its own two feet."
Another councillor noted the subsidies were being "wasted on luvvies”, which set the ground for the headline which would make national headlines and which is still remembered and quoted today.
‘Luvvies vs lavvies’. It’s catchy, you have to admit. Completely inaccurate admittedly, but when has that ever stopped a good headline?
The credit for the headline has often been claimed by The Scarborough News, but it was almost certainly first used on the BBC current affairs programme Newsnight. It’s certainly where it gained the most traction. The programme filmed a section in Scarborough, narrated by the SJT actor John Strickland, using the headline and from that came national and, subsequently, international coverage of the issue.
As had previously occurred with public disputes between the council and the theatre, it was an own-goal for the councillors briefing against the theatre as it generated some exceptionally negative publicity for the town as well a fair amount of ridicule. Particularly once Alan Ayckbourn was interviewed by the national media.
Cannily, he stuck to the facts noting just how much the SJT generated financially for the town - and quoting directing from Scarborough Council’s own figures on the matter!
Although the issue had been simmering since the end of 1996, it had caught the public’s attention with various newspaper headlines and TV reports by 3 January 1997. On 6 January, the whole matter came to a head when Scarborough Council voted by 35 to 9 (Councillor Kenyon being one of the nine voting against) that the theatre should be granted the extra £50,000.
The Mayor of Scarborough, Mavis Don, noted "The luvvies vs lavvies debate has been demeaning" as well as pointedly noting that there was never any possibility of it being the theatre versus toilets as they were funded by entirely separate budgets. If anything, the headlines had worked in the theatre’s favour as the media coverage had been so negative to the town.
Of course, the debate would simmer on for some time and ‘luvvies vs lavvies’ would be used frequently in the months to come to describe the incident. Nor was it the last funding crisis, just two months later, Yorkshire County Council reneged on the tripartite deal and Alan Ayckbourn announced the SJT would close indefinitely from September.
But that’s another crisis for another story.
Back to ‘Lavvies Vs Luvvies’, ultimately both the theatre and the toilets were funded. Although as Alan Ayckbourn noted, the SJT did have some lovely toilets anyway which the public were more than welcome to use!
Article by and copyright of Simon Murgatroyd. Please do not reproduce this article without permission of the copyright holder.